


i want you so much / i hate your guts

by meios



Series: grief like phoenixes like gas stations [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Largely self-indulgent, M/M, Sex after nearly dying, Sex in the rubble of an exploded building, ethiopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 16:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12193908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: "this is torturous electricity between both of us."





	i want you so much / i hate your guts

he doesn’t know what to be angrier at: the long expanse of desert that threatens to swallow him up like a graveyard all over again, or the fact that there are tears streaming down his face, fingers breaking as he moves fractured pieces of drywall and brick, still smoking and hot to touch. his helmet is broken, thrown somewhere toward a henchman’s body, bullet holes letting brain matter squelch out from the confines of a crushed skull. he digs until his fingers refuse to grasp anything, and then he uses his wrists, his forearms, his shoulders. somewhere behind him is the real world, but for now, he can only swipe sweat away from his brow, over his domino mask.

 

the armor is cracked in the center, caved in like a mobster’s tunnel, when he finally shoves a ceiling off of him. jason releases the most pathetic breath he’s ever held, crumbling to his knees, ringing ear pressed to the bat emblem, crippled hands curled up into the most painful of fists. a heartbeat, powerful, hidden beneath this cocoon of a suit, and jason is whispering, “i’m tryin’, b, i can’t—you fuckin’ asshole, ’m gonna wring your _neck_ ,” as he searches for the catches and clasps, shoving them open with his nose, pushing them away in a blind sort of panic.

 

in the smoke and ash, the moon hangs high above them, and bruce meets jason’s eyes when the cowl is finally pulled away. jason’s mask is barely hanging onto his flesh now, spirit gum melted in the heat. faintly, a world away, he remembers like seeing a movie at the drive through, far away and dislocated, a man kneeled over a boy, the ugly sobs racking his body like his ribcage could have collapsed in on itself at any moment.

 

jason’s mouth twists, bottom lip trembling, and bruce pushes himself into a sitting position, bruises and cuts all fresh and bloodied, but there are strong arms around jason’s body, and they crumble like rotten food, eyes wide as dinner plates as they draw back in a fluid, matched motion. there is no thought to be found here, no soft sense of pain to be felt here: they do not fit together. broken things lose that ability so very quickly, to slot and complete and no, here they are: they fall into one another, fragmented bones and terminal illnesses painting their mouths as they meet.

 

they are the bullet, they are the flame.

 

words mean so very little in the remains of a building. even if jason would ever want to, his throat is lined with so much ash, his lungs blackened like the butt of a cigarette. jason inhales bruce, though, drinks him in as if a glass of whiskey, a fancy cigar, ruined fingers scrabbling for some kind of purchase, for some kind of respite on either side of bruce’s face. there’s a shiner ebbing into a full-on half-faced bruise, almost matching the giant gash on the side of jason’s head from when his helmet had shattered.

 

when bruce kisses him, he is taken back to being a body without a soul, being a man without a meaning, forced to become an outsider looking in. he does not remember death, only the movie screens he had stared at, dark like sleep is, little technicolor stars twinkling and then fading out, time an illusion, a concept that has no true meaning in death. like a new world, a new universe opening up before him, they are alone in the desert, surrounded by burning pyres like funerals, the stench of deceased flesh like cologne on their bodies.

 

jason growls; bruce wraps a hand around the back of his neck to keep him there, heavy as stone sirens, anchoring his pirate ship body and luring him out to sea. somewhere in the middle, they are become one, as the destroyer of worlds. broken things they may be, drifting as they embrace atop this landlocked river styx, jason eases bruce back down onto his back, bodies slated and slotted and still _wrong_ but they are their own fates and they will press and metamorphize and slip, slide in this dust-sand-ash.

 

like phoenixes, they will rise, but until then, bruce will mold their mouths together in this silent death-love, as though fighting against the very confines of the both of their skeletons, shucking whatever armor and metal and cloth keeps them from each other, becoming blood brothers, torn hands and torsos and legs and cocks pressed together and mixed, choking on their own spittle and coughing out every breath, they say nothing but the other name, as if it’s the only thing worth remembering.

 

life oozes into them. where there had been numbness now surges something almost otherworldly, like a desperation that wracks the pair with both the fright of it and the power of it. the fires die down as they rise up, paleness against the darkness of the sky a heavy contrast. they take a step together and clatter down once more, pieced together and yet still not whole.

 

they remain there long into the night, ecstasy traced into the pores of their bones, plasma dipped and replaced with something orgasmic and frightening, awful and amazing, and on the sunrise, they rest, rising with it on the horizon, sweat-slicked and golden.


End file.
